Blood Gadgets

Not something we'd usually think about as this one is a downer - like the environmental impact our lust with gadgets have, so too they have an impact, sometimes sight unseen, on human lives around the world.

An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo. With throngs waiting in lines in the last few days to buy the latest iPhone, I’m thinking: What if we could harness that desperation for new technologies to the desperate need to curb the killing in central Africa?

That's because warlords finance their operations partly from selling these minerals to suppliers who sell them in turn to electronics manufacturers. Something to read and think about today.